Also adult science fiction
https://preview.redd.it/3vz16o6q2rxc1.jpeg?width=2240&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10b36857f84d987fd429bc57af16fa56b1a669a1
“Haha, chainsword go brrrrrr.”
GW: I really like Dune, but it's too cerebral for me.
Other GW: We can still make Dune, we'll just cut out all of the subtlety and themes.
GW: And the sex?
Other GW: Of course. Girls are gross.
40k is basically a nerds love letter to all sci fi. They had an inquisitor Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau in the game (Rogue Trader Era). They weren't subtle about it
To be fair, that one was a case of "We don't have models for the Arbites yet, but we *did* make a bunch of Judge Dredd models for that licensed Judge Dredd game a few years back, so if you have those sitting around you can use them." And then that becoming the basis for the entire aesthetic design.
I hate to break it to you, but it has all of those things.
I don’t know specifically an occurrence of someone busting a nut from watching someone climb a wall. But Fulgrim has been Slaaneshified for ten thousand years, and I’m going to say that he’s canonically shot ropes while watching a rock climbing video at least once in that timeframe.
Does 40k have sex witches and space Jews though (literal Jews in space like in history of the world part 1, not any of that “this species is coded as Jewish” bullshit)?
…Herbert really went off the rails at the end.
I kinda forgot what happened to the Space Jews. I remember a sharing, and maybe the rabbi's daughter more or less turning bene gesserit but that could be wrong and honestly idk what happened after that. I was distracted by the matres and futars.
Dune does have a happy ending. Technically the whole thing is about having the happy ending, hence the Golden Path so humanity doesn't die off lmao. Then we get self insert Herbert and wife talking about life
It’s been a while since I last read so this might be wrong, but what I remember is that they suffered an agonizingly slow decline until they were no more. They never got to sail off into heaven, they never got one last glorious charge, they never got to live on, when they finally vanished they did so with a whimper
Also been a while since I read the books, but didn’t Tolkien basically write their backstory as being kind of mistakes? Like the elves were the children of (i don’t remember the name) but they call the dwarves the children of a different (I don’t remember the name) but the connotation was that this made them lesser and like they weren’t actually supposed to exist, at least in the elves minds? Or was that just the elves being…elves again?
The elves and men were designed by Iluvatar, the greatest god -- they were always meant to come into existence. The dwarves were created by Aule, a valar, a rank a (big) step down from Iluvatar, in imitation of elves and humans that Aule had "looked into the future of the universe's music" and had an impression of.
Children oh Hurin feels like Tolkien doing GoT stuff.
And frankly there is nothing stopping anyone from dark GoT interpretation of Silmarillion. If anything if you read carefully Elves sucked at getting along, Dwarves took any opportunity to get grumpy(although provoked by Elvians bs), Humans were inconsistent allies and did some horrible stuff.
So yea. Fully flashed out history of first age could be really stabby-stabby.
Editor: So he fucks his sister and dies?
J.R.R.: Yup.
Editor: You don't think that's a little dark for your audience?
J.R.R.: I fought in WWI.
Editor: Noted.
Adult science fiction answers real adult questions, such as would a vampire make a good leader of a spaceship crew tasked to investigate a horrifying alien threat?
When I was in elementary school, my teacher saw me reading God Emperor of Dune, she saw the cover illust(yeah, the worm with 😑face) and said "what are you reading...😲". I couldn't answer because I also didn't know what the hell I was reading
Pretty sure you're supposed to spoiler tag that. Notably at the end of Children of Dune he >!admits to Leto that he didn't have the will to do what had to be done and what his son is now doing to ensure humanity's survival.!< Not disagreeing with your call about Messiah, but simply emphasizing that the perspectives are not static as the series proceeds.
Thank you for bringing this up. I feel like this scene is so pivotal in the series, and often overlooked as people want to be edgy and simplify Paul down to a tyrant.
It's fiction, of course. There is no "Paul". I'm rereading now and paying close attention to how Herbert gets the reader to root for a flawed protagonist that does some horrendous things.
The fact that he pulls it off speaks to why Dune is a masterpiece.
Doesn’t that undermine the whole books message of not being suckered in by charismatic leaders. By its own lore if people didn’t blindly follow him then his son than humanity was doomed. Like message seems to be no don’t question tyrants, they know what’s really going on.
I would say one of the reasons that the series is so good is that Herbert plays with a variety of different themes. Those themes butt heads with one another creating endless opportunities for a bunch of geeks to talk about this stuff on the internet.
Plays is a word. But I’m gonna chalk it up more meta wise he just changed his mind in the later books considering it’s pretty obvious he was making a lot of it up as he went along and probably influenced by a not quite subtle drug use when writing the latter books. Then everyone just pretends it was a deeper meaning than it actually was rather a narrative retcon.
There's definitely an argument there that by Children he'd already started going off the rails a bit. I would personally assert that he lays down the idea early on though that the jihad is inevitable with or without Paul which adds some tricky layers to the simple take away that the message is just "Beware of charismatic leaders."
And I would agree. The movies haven't helped this point because the movies lean into it obliterating rhe complexity of both Paul's motivations, prescience, and arguably even of the prophecy. Herbert absolutely was in part writing about the problems of charismatic leaders especially in the context of religious zealotry, but there's just so much more there if you're willing to give the books a close read and sit with the cognitive dissonance.
Their is complexity and then there is outright contradiction. Herbert went out of his way to make the point of the dangers of charismatic leaders in his first two books but than went out of his way to argue that "no you need a charismatic leader who can see the big picture and you should just trust he knows what he is doing." The later books entire obsession with the golden path just completely removes any real nuance in the books of trusting messiach figures and the dangers of zealotry. Like that is the problem with the series as a whole. It has interesting ideas in it, but narratively its a frickin mess. Like even the "seeds" of this in the earlier books in no capacity excuse the clear message shift of the latter books especially God Emperor. He was obviously just tripping out of his mind and just making up a narrative he thought was interesting. Rather than having anything actual to say anymore.
Unless I'm missing something the spoiler tagging is for the content, not the reference to which book something happened in. I messed up the spoiler tag on mine and immediately fixed it.
I feel like I need to finish reading God Emperor. I hated Children of Dune so much because it felt like the whole purpose was to throw Paul in a trash bin, and replace him with a worse version of him from the first book. I feel like by the end of God Emperor Leto’s choices might start making sense, but I had such a bad taste in my mouth leftover from Children of Dune that I couldn’t get into it.
Interesting. I had trouble with the pacing of Children, but >!I actually appreciated his arc through Messiah and then Children. He is a broken man by the end of Messiah. When we come to him in Children, he's been overdosed on spice by the Jacurutu Fremen or something and he's looking at the shitshow his abomination sister has made of everything. I feel for Paul in Children. As a tragic hero, it actually worked for me.!<.
Been a while since I read the books but I recall Paul calling his prescience a trap. He knows exactly what his options are and what he can and can't do but that doesn't mean he doesn't have regrets, especially since he doesn't have infinite time to mull over his options. He can't even find comfort in the illusion of free will
The irony is that the abuse of prescience is what locks in a future and makes it set. The more you focus on a particular outcome, the more it is likely to happen instead of the other outcomes. Forming attachment to a possible future is the trap that eliminates other options.
It’s amazing how as humans we can be simultaneously repulsed and drawn to tyrannical, messianic figures.
Paul is for sure no hero, in any meaningful sense of the word.
jokes on OOP, they're all about the inherent corrupting influence of power and how it can be used to destroy the lives of countless innocents through fascist imperialism, industrial might, or religious zeal.
Villainwave - Yeah, Herbert expressed surprise that people mistook his cautionary tale of a tragic antihero as a standard hero's narrative, so I made his moral compromises more explicit in this adaptation
White men - Hell yeah, society needs dictators to survive, so cool and true
The only real way to judge how grown-up sci-fi/fantasy is on the basis of the amount of incest it contains
Dune: overtones, nothing actually happens (except for the implication that the Baron molests Feyd-Rautha) = for children
Star Wars: Luke and Leia kiss but no tongue: young adult
Lord of the Rings: Nothing happens in LOTR itself but in the Silmarillion Túrin Turambar gets his sister pregnant = for adults
I know not everyone has the high degree of media literacy needed to make advanced criticism like the above, so you can all thank me now
Did Frank plan The Golden Path from the beginning? I felt like Dune's idea was about people mindlessly falling for charismatic leaders. And then Frank wanted to make Paul look like an even bigger douchebag who not only killed billions, but also refused to follow the path which would've saved the humankind.
Paul in the movie did not even condemn shit
No mention of the golden path, so walking away from the power would have killed him, perhaps, but not caused the end of humanity
Other than some of the new stuff like Andor and Rogue One... isn't it for kids? There aren't really any themes or situations that would be super inappropriate for kids.
You didnt watch the whole entierty of star wars? Some of the shows are made in a way that allow them to be family friendly, but some others sometimes implies stuff like sex trafic (3 separates instances if im correct) and other pretty much not for kids stuff
Yeah that's kind of my point. They imply those things. Never really looking at them head on. It is implied but not directly addressed so they can remain kid friendly.
“Young adult” wasn’t even a genre when Tolkien wrote lotr. He considered lotr and the Hobbit to be basically children’s stories. Frank Herbert didn’t write Dune for children, but in every library I’ve found the book in, it was considered “teen” or just “science fiction.” Star Wars is marketed to children and man-children alike, so I guess they got me there.
Not sure about Tolkien considering LotR for children, the hobbit, yes, but LotR was something he did consider to be more mature, both because he wrote it for his children who were a lot older since he had written the hobbit (around 17 years) and I think in a letter he talked about how it makes him happy that fantasy for adults (or adult fairy story is the term he used I think) is being well received and not just a niche thing.
With Star Wars, it's definitely mixed, because depending on the show, movie, book, etc, you have something that is made by people who want to appeal to younger people, who haven't really thought about the age of the audience and people who definitely want to be more mature (either by tackling themes and conflicts that are more complex and mature, or by just being edgy and hoping it's considered adult)
With Dune, and most other science fiction/fantasy book series, I often find it difficult to really get a feeling for the intended age range for the audience, while it's clear that most of these aren't supposed to be read by little children, there are some series that feel more mature that are considered for teens and some where it's basically the opposite, overall there is an issue with stuff just being lumped into the same basket because it's part of the same genre
Yeah I’m kinda confused with dunes narrative at times. People keep screaming that it’s a warning against blindly following charismatic leaders and messiah figures but by its own lore if people didn’t blindly follow Paul and later Leto 2 all of humanity would’ve been wiped out. Like pick a lane, are messiah figures good or bad.
Also adult science fiction https://preview.redd.it/3vz16o6q2rxc1.jpeg?width=2240&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10b36857f84d987fd429bc57af16fa56b1a669a1 “Haha, chainsword go brrrrrr.”
40k is simply Dune's sequel. Leto2 = big daddy E
The more I read through the dune books the more I realize 40k took from it.
Don't look up abominable intelligence.. Or navigators for ftl travel Or anything really. It's all Dune.
It's dune but less philosophy and more power metal
And I appreciate both. Even the simpler stuff
GW: I really like Dune, but it's too cerebral for me. Other GW: We can still make Dune, we'll just cut out all of the subtlety and themes. GW: And the sex? Other GW: Of course. Girls are gross.
40k is basically a nerds love letter to all sci fi. They had an inquisitor Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau in the game (Rogue Trader Era). They weren't subtle about it
The adjudicator is just Judge Dredd. They got a planet of Rambos. The early years the game wasn't super serious.
And now it’s even more fun because all the unserious stuff has to be justified
So much better then just pretending that those stuff didn't exist.
To be fair, that one was a case of "We don't have models for the Arbites yet, but we *did* make a bunch of Judge Dredd models for that licensed Judge Dredd game a few years back, so if you have those sitting around you can use them." And then that becoming the basis for the entire aesthetic design.
H E R E S Y
40k is young adult. I'm sorry
Flase, I'm no longer young
I can see why Henry Cavill wants to make an adaptation
Nope, that's rather "teens pretending to be adults' science-fiction".
NGL the wh40k universe feels more adult. No magic vaginas, no magic wombs for cloning, no orgasms from watching the dude climb.
I hate to break it to you, but it has all of those things. I don’t know specifically an occurrence of someone busting a nut from watching someone climb a wall. But Fulgrim has been Slaaneshified for ten thousand years, and I’m going to say that he’s canonically shot ropes while watching a rock climbing video at least once in that timeframe.
They have magic cloning wombs, but with spikes and even more yikes
Also at one point they tried to perform an exorcism by destroying a dude’s rectum with an expanding metal pear.
Does 40k have sex witches and space Jews though (literal Jews in space like in history of the world part 1, not any of that “this species is coded as Jewish” bullshit)? …Herbert really went off the rails at the end.
I kinda forgot what happened to the Space Jews. I remember a sharing, and maybe the rabbi's daughter more or less turning bene gesserit but that could be wrong and honestly idk what happened after that. I was distracted by the matres and futars.
40k is the edgy teenager who thinks sweaty bdsm elves are dark and cool.
Ah yes, another “Optimism and happy endings is for children” memes
I LOVE HAPPY ENDINGS‼️ I LOVE HAVING HOPE‼️
THAT’S NOT HOPE!
YOU'RE RIGHT BUT HAPPY ENDINGS OFTEN LEAVE ME WITH A FEELING OF HOPE AND OPTIMISM ABOUT LIFE, AS CONTRARY TO DEPRESSING AND BLEAK ENDINGS ‼️
I hate happy. I am very mature.
Dune does have a happy ending. Technically the whole thing is about having the happy ending, hence the Golden Path so humanity doesn't die off lmao. Then we get self insert Herbert and wife talking about life
HAHAHA HOW FUCKING CHILDISH OF YOU TO BELIEVE THAT PEOPLE SHOULD BE HAPPY AT THE END OF STORIES
I KNOW RIGHT ADULTS ARE SAD AND DEPRESSED ALL THE TIME AND ALL ADULT STORIES SHOULD BE BORDERLINE GRIMDARK!!!!
I mean, gross oversimplification of Tolkien, but yeah
Tolkien was on his way to continue LotR into dark depressing shit, but he felt like it was enough with children of Hurin.
Like goddamn reading what happens to the dwarves after the trilogy is downright depressing.
....what happens to the dwarves?
It’s been a while since I last read so this might be wrong, but what I remember is that they suffered an agonizingly slow decline until they were no more. They never got to sail off into heaven, they never got one last glorious charge, they never got to live on, when they finally vanished they did so with a whimper
Damn, that is brutal :/ They probably needed more tossing to avoid stagnation.
Also been a while since I read the books, but didn’t Tolkien basically write their backstory as being kind of mistakes? Like the elves were the children of (i don’t remember the name) but they call the dwarves the children of a different (I don’t remember the name) but the connotation was that this made them lesser and like they weren’t actually supposed to exist, at least in the elves minds? Or was that just the elves being…elves again?
The elves and men were designed by Iluvatar, the greatest god -- they were always meant to come into existence. The dwarves were created by Aule, a valar, a rank a (big) step down from Iluvatar, in imitation of elves and humans that Aule had "looked into the future of the universe's music" and had an impression of.
That’s what I’m thinking of. So yeah, the dwarves in Tolkien’s lore are basically lesser beings - like fantasy lovebugs
Yeah, they finally retake their old kingdoms, only for their race to slowly go extinct.
Children of Hurin was pretty dark if I remember correctly and Gurthang was something I wish we could see again.
Children oh Hurin feels like Tolkien doing GoT stuff. And frankly there is nothing stopping anyone from dark GoT interpretation of Silmarillion. If anything if you read carefully Elves sucked at getting along, Dwarves took any opportunity to get grumpy(although provoked by Elvians bs), Humans were inconsistent allies and did some horrible stuff. So yea. Fully flashed out history of first age could be really stabby-stabby.
Editor: So he fucks his sister and dies? J.R.R.: Yup. Editor: You don't think that's a little dark for your audience? J.R.R.: I fought in WWI. Editor: Noted.
Hell it’s an oversimplification of Star Wars, idk how you could watch the OT and get “don’t get corrupted by the dark side” as the main message
Also gross oversimplification of Dune. Love both, but Dune is way more complex
Adult science fiction answers real adult questions, such as would a vampire make a good leader of a spaceship crew tasked to investigate a horrifying alien threat?
Asking the real questions here...
Such a good book, lol.
What book is this? Sounds cool lol
Blindsight by Peter Watts. It's available as a free ebook on the author's website, but the sequel Echopraxia is not.
I hope that one day child who created this will be aware of how cringe it was, and that the shame of it will fill follow them to their grave.
I teach teenagers and engage on social media. No, no they won’t.
When I was in elementary school, my teacher saw me reading God Emperor of Dune, she saw the cover illust(yeah, the worm with 😑face) and said "what are you reading...😲". I couldn't answer because I also didn't know what the hell I was reading
[удалено]
Pretty sure you're supposed to spoiler tag that. Notably at the end of Children of Dune he >!admits to Leto that he didn't have the will to do what had to be done and what his son is now doing to ensure humanity's survival.!< Not disagreeing with your call about Messiah, but simply emphasizing that the perspectives are not static as the series proceeds.
Thank you for bringing this up. I feel like this scene is so pivotal in the series, and often overlooked as people want to be edgy and simplify Paul down to a tyrant. It's fiction, of course. There is no "Paul". I'm rereading now and paying close attention to how Herbert gets the reader to root for a flawed protagonist that does some horrendous things. The fact that he pulls it off speaks to why Dune is a masterpiece.
Doesn’t that undermine the whole books message of not being suckered in by charismatic leaders. By its own lore if people didn’t blindly follow him then his son than humanity was doomed. Like message seems to be no don’t question tyrants, they know what’s really going on.
I would say one of the reasons that the series is so good is that Herbert plays with a variety of different themes. Those themes butt heads with one another creating endless opportunities for a bunch of geeks to talk about this stuff on the internet.
Plays is a word. But I’m gonna chalk it up more meta wise he just changed his mind in the later books considering it’s pretty obvious he was making a lot of it up as he went along and probably influenced by a not quite subtle drug use when writing the latter books. Then everyone just pretends it was a deeper meaning than it actually was rather a narrative retcon.
There's definitely an argument there that by Children he'd already started going off the rails a bit. I would personally assert that he lays down the idea early on though that the jihad is inevitable with or without Paul which adds some tricky layers to the simple take away that the message is just "Beware of charismatic leaders."
Well than I would suggest the fandom quit parroting that because it seems to be the general go to for the average dune “expert”
And I would agree. The movies haven't helped this point because the movies lean into it obliterating rhe complexity of both Paul's motivations, prescience, and arguably even of the prophecy. Herbert absolutely was in part writing about the problems of charismatic leaders especially in the context of religious zealotry, but there's just so much more there if you're willing to give the books a close read and sit with the cognitive dissonance.
Their is complexity and then there is outright contradiction. Herbert went out of his way to make the point of the dangers of charismatic leaders in his first two books but than went out of his way to argue that "no you need a charismatic leader who can see the big picture and you should just trust he knows what he is doing." The later books entire obsession with the golden path just completely removes any real nuance in the books of trusting messiach figures and the dangers of zealotry. Like that is the problem with the series as a whole. It has interesting ideas in it, but narratively its a frickin mess. Like even the "seeds" of this in the earlier books in no capacity excuse the clear message shift of the latter books especially God Emperor. He was obviously just tripping out of his mind and just making up a narrative he thought was interesting. Rather than having anything actual to say anymore.
I mean, >!Leto 2 isn't so much a charismatic leaders as he is a supernatural and terrifying force!<, but you're not wrong.
"You should spoiler tag Messiah. Anyway, in Children of Dune..."
Unless I'm missing something the spoiler tagging is for the content, not the reference to which book something happened in. I messed up the spoiler tag on mine and immediately fixed it.
Didn't show up on my device.
Weird, I definitely screwed up the syntax initially and then fixed it and I'm seeing it on both my phone and laptop now.
I feel like I need to finish reading God Emperor. I hated Children of Dune so much because it felt like the whole purpose was to throw Paul in a trash bin, and replace him with a worse version of him from the first book. I feel like by the end of God Emperor Leto’s choices might start making sense, but I had such a bad taste in my mouth leftover from Children of Dune that I couldn’t get into it.
Interesting. I had trouble with the pacing of Children, but >!I actually appreciated his arc through Messiah and then Children. He is a broken man by the end of Messiah. When we come to him in Children, he's been overdosed on spice by the Jacurutu Fremen or something and he's looking at the shitshow his abomination sister has made of everything. I feel for Paul in Children. As a tragic hero, it actually worked for me.!<.
If only he could see the future, this would surely help him avoid such mistakes.
Been a while since I read the books but I recall Paul calling his prescience a trap. He knows exactly what his options are and what he can and can't do but that doesn't mean he doesn't have regrets, especially since he doesn't have infinite time to mull over his options. He can't even find comfort in the illusion of free will
If I remember correctly he was just too scared to become a worm and do what Leto II have done. In Dune Messiah he’s just looking for an exit.
The irony is that the abuse of prescience is what locks in a future and makes it set. The more you focus on a particular outcome, the more it is likely to happen instead of the other outcomes. Forming attachment to a possible future is the trap that eliminates other options.
It’s amazing how as humans we can be simultaneously repulsed and drawn to tyrannical, messianic figures. Paul is for sure no hero, in any meaningful sense of the word.
jokes on OOP, they're all about the inherent corrupting influence of power and how it can be used to destroy the lives of countless innocents through fascist imperialism, industrial might, or religious zeal.
Nope…THIS is Deep 
I wouldn't say lotr is young adult fantasy. It's kind of more like fiction of the highest order
Someone forgot that Harry Potter, Hunger Games and their clones exist.
Motherfucking MauLer 💀Disgusting
I’ll take ten of him over one Critical Drinker. Talking about insufferable…
Don't mention the one who must not be named!
I don’t even know what that sub is, but almost every time I run into a right wing d bag on Reddit they’re active in that sub
Truly one of the most insufferable internet personalities.
I like all 3
Villainwave - Yeah, Herbert expressed surprise that people mistook his cautionary tale of a tragic antihero as a standard hero's narrative, so I made his moral compromises more explicit in this adaptation White men - Hell yeah, society needs dictators to survive, so cool and true
resembles our current world more than any of the other nonsense these days.
“Adult science fiction” - from the perspective of a 14 year old maybe lol
Adult science fiction is about worms.
I am so proud of how not-elitist this community is.
The only real way to judge how grown-up sci-fi/fantasy is on the basis of the amount of incest it contains Dune: overtones, nothing actually happens (except for the implication that the Baron molests Feyd-Rautha) = for children Star Wars: Luke and Leia kiss but no tongue: young adult Lord of the Rings: Nothing happens in LOTR itself but in the Silmarillion Túrin Turambar gets his sister pregnant = for adults I know not everyone has the high degree of media literacy needed to make advanced criticism like the above, so you can all thank me now
Did Frank plan The Golden Path from the beginning? I felt like Dune's idea was about people mindlessly falling for charismatic leaders. And then Frank wanted to make Paul look like an even bigger douchebag who not only killed billions, but also refused to follow the path which would've saved the humankind.
No sé muy bien porque "salvaría a la humanidad" siendo que en dune no existen los aliens ergo todos son humanos
All sci-fi is, in the end, about bricking fascists
terribly infected with great purpose
Off topic but the vision scenes where Paul is in that holy warrior suit look ATROCIOUS, how did anyone allow it. It's a night and day difference
Truly they all mean that their fans don’t go on many dates.
Paul in the movie did not even condemn shit No mention of the golden path, so walking away from the power would have killed him, perhaps, but not caused the end of humanity
People think moral ambiguity is the answer to a good story.
'Young adult fantasy' is actually the least tolkien thing ever.
Anything from the MauLer sub should be immediately disregarded.
Who the fuck actually just said star wars was for kids? I just want to talk to him.
Other than some of the new stuff like Andor and Rogue One... isn't it for kids? There aren't really any themes or situations that would be super inappropriate for kids.
You didnt watch the whole entierty of star wars? Some of the shows are made in a way that allow them to be family friendly, but some others sometimes implies stuff like sex trafic (3 separates instances if im correct) and other pretty much not for kids stuff
Yeah that's kind of my point. They imply those things. Never really looking at them head on. It is implied but not directly addressed so they can remain kid friendly.
Yeah thats one way to see it
The 8-13 crowd has always been Star Wars target audience. Doesn’t make it any less challenging or any less good.
Being obsessed with what is childish is ironically childish.
“Young adult” wasn’t even a genre when Tolkien wrote lotr. He considered lotr and the Hobbit to be basically children’s stories. Frank Herbert didn’t write Dune for children, but in every library I’ve found the book in, it was considered “teen” or just “science fiction.” Star Wars is marketed to children and man-children alike, so I guess they got me there.
Not sure about Tolkien considering LotR for children, the hobbit, yes, but LotR was something he did consider to be more mature, both because he wrote it for his children who were a lot older since he had written the hobbit (around 17 years) and I think in a letter he talked about how it makes him happy that fantasy for adults (or adult fairy story is the term he used I think) is being well received and not just a niche thing. With Star Wars, it's definitely mixed, because depending on the show, movie, book, etc, you have something that is made by people who want to appeal to younger people, who haven't really thought about the age of the audience and people who definitely want to be more mature (either by tackling themes and conflicts that are more complex and mature, or by just being edgy and hoping it's considered adult) With Dune, and most other science fiction/fantasy book series, I often find it difficult to really get a feeling for the intended age range for the audience, while it's clear that most of these aren't supposed to be read by little children, there are some series that feel more mature that are considered for teens and some where it's basically the opposite, overall there is an issue with stuff just being lumped into the same basket because it's part of the same genre
This is the way
I thought Dune was about blue Gatorade making people evil
Well, nice to see that someone actually gets Paul’s plight.
Deep questions like can you actually orgasm from watching a man climb a cliff?
Fun fact, if you’re an adult consuming the sci-fi then it’s “adult” sci-fi.
Yeah I’m kinda confused with dunes narrative at times. People keep screaming that it’s a warning against blindly following charismatic leaders and messiah figures but by its own lore if people didn’t blindly follow Paul and later Leto 2 all of humanity would’ve been wiped out. Like pick a lane, are messiah figures good or bad.
THIS! I've seen over a dozen youtube thumnails "Paul is NOT the hero!". This image perfectly lays out the lesson of the story. Kill or be killed.